AI 2027: A Concrete Scenario for Superhuman AI
AI 2027 (2025)
Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, and colleagues predict that superhuman AI will arrive by 2027, bringing changes larger than the Industrial Revolution. Their detailed scenario, informed by trend extrapolations and over 100 experts, follows a fictional company OpenBrain as it races to build AGI. It includes two endings—a slowdown and a race—and aims to spark debate, not prescribe a path.
We have set ourselves an impossible task. Trying to predict how superhuman AI in 2027 would go is like trying to predict how World War 3 in 2027 would go, except that it’s an even larger departure from past case studies.
- firemelt
I like this one better
- AlexErrant
My main issue with this timeline is that AI still has trouble transitioning to the real world. It predicts for 2029:
> There are swarms of insect-sized drones that can poison human infantry before they are even noticed; flocks of bird-sized drones to hunt the insects; new ICBM interceptors, and new, harder-to-intercept ICBMs. The rest of the world watches the buildup in horror, but it seems to have a momentum of its own.
Does anyone really predict insect drones _in production_ 3 years from now, to the degree that we need bird drones to hunt the insect drones? How the hell are these things powered?
Lean/math/millenienium prizes are "grindable" [0]. Wake me up when AI is making order-of-magnitude improvements in ungrindable real world tasks like batteries, hypersonic engine manufacturing, and stealth/silent motors that you can't hear.
- aadyachinubhai
I don't like grandiose claims about AI.
- Topology1
Mom said it was my turn to post this
- mcbuilder
One of the most biased claims IMO in AI 2027 is that a huge portion of the geopolitical and existential risk argument is hinged on the notion that China just steals the US frontier weights.